How Rescuer, Victim and Persecutor Roles Lead to Difficult Relationships

As I wrote in my previous post about Karpman’s Triangle, three archetypal roles typically lead to difficult relationships:

• Rescuer: The hero or heroine that tries to take responsibility for others and may avoid their own issues in the process.
• Victim: See themselves as helpless and powerless. When bad things happen to them they identify with the role and take a passive stance (not to be confused with anyone who’s being abused).
• Persecutor: Convinced of being right, they blame, criticize, punish and bully, often with anger.

Roles in Difficult Relationships

These words can be difficult to hear, and they may bring up lots of feelings. Please try to feel into them– without judgment–to see if in some small way you or your partner falls into them in a way that makes for a difficult relationship.

Each of these roles has a positive origin (giving care, eliciting care, and setting boundaries) which has been lost. We can all fall into these ruts unintentionally. We might typically start in one role, and slip into another without realizing it. We may feel like the Victim, or imagine that we’re the Rescuer, but come across as Persecutor to others.

These roles affect how we behave and how we feel, but also how we see others.

Compulsives and their partners can easily fall into these roles, as we’ll see in this story.

Act One: Sharon and Rob Meet Their Match

Sharon could see that Rob needed help. He was a diamond in the rough, and attractive to her on many levels; he was smart and handsome and had a quick, snarky sense of humor. He was unhappy in his job, with good reason it seemed. But she could help him with that. She was Type-A and had definitely mastered the work thing. She was good at fixing problems.

She was aware of simply wanting to help someone she cared about. But in the back of her mind, she felt that if he needed her, he wouldn’t leave her. Despite being successful in her career, she liked the security that came with having someone dependent on her.

Rob had seen that Sharon needed help, too. She was wound way too tight and he believed he could help her relax. But in the back of his mind, he also liked that someone was going to try to help him.

Act Two: Sharon and Rob Get Stuck

Sharon launched into Rescuer mode and Rob went into Victim mode.

She typed out his resume but he wouldn’t send it. She wrote out what he needed to say to his boss but he didn’t follow through. She even did some of his work assignments. When she tried to give him easy solutions he felt that she just didn’t get how complicated his situation was. He experienced her efforts as critical, and more proof that she just didn’t understand him.

He had appeared easy-going to her at first, but he turned out to be passive at times.

She had appeared helpful to him at first, but she turned out to be controlling at times.

Though he wouldn’t have admitted it, Rob actually liked being rescued—or at least having people try to rescue him. It made him feel cared about. And he sensed on some level that she liked taking care of him because it made her feel more secure. So, in the back of his mind, he felt that if he did start taking care of himself, and if he no longer needed her, she would feel less attracted to him.

Taking on Roles Without Realizing It

Instead of feeling like the heroic Rescuer, she felt like a Victim to his passivity. It’s painful to watch someone you care about self-sabotage, so she then experienced him as a Persecutor.

There was a reason he experienced her as Persecutor: his passivity infuriated her and she took on that role. There is sometimes an element of masochism in the passive Victim which tends to bring out the Persecutor in the originally well-intentioned rescuer.

While there may be many explanations for this, the Rescuer often feels their efforts are not working, so they become frustrated and resort to punishing. They feel that it’s justified and that it’s for their partner’s own good. The Rescuer then crosses over to the role of the Persecutor.

So both parties end up in the roles of Victim and Persecutor, even though they had hoped to be Rescuers.

A Caveat About “Victims”

I want to be clear that I am not saying that all people who are victims seek to be victimized, or that they provoke persecution. Some people are clearly abusive without any encouragement from the people they inflict their problems on.

People with full-blown Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) often control and verbally abuse others with their criticism. In some cases there is little that the partner of the OCPD sufferer can do to change the situation but to set boundaries and protect themselves.

But there are situations in which the dynamic can change. In these we need to sort out the difference between being a victim, and getting caught in a role as a Victim. If both are happening, as they sometimes do, getting out of the role may help to improve the difficult relationship.

Improving Difficult Relationships

Here are some suggestions for when you find yourself caught in these roles:

• If you feel that you are in the Victim role,
  • Acknowledge what you get out of the role:
    • Love?
    • Help?
    • A pass from taking care of yourself or taking chances?
    • A sense of being “good” because you’re not the “mean” one?
  • Focus on what you really want.
  • Take an active role in achieving it.
• If you find yourself trying to Rescue someone else,
  • Acknowledge what you get out of the role:
    • Love?
    • Security?
    • A sense that you are good or heroic?
    • A way to avoid your own issues?
  • Stop doing things for others.
  • Teach them to take care of themselves instead.
• If you find yourself so angry that you Persecute others,
  • Acknowledge what you get out of the role
    • Power?
    • A sense of righteousness?
    • Revenge?
    • Are you transferring the oppressive perfectionism you feel inside yourself onto others?
  • Honestly consider the impact you have on others: does your scolding or punishing actually help?
  • Find the healthy essence of the aggressive energy, which is usually about setting appropriate limits.
  • Challenge others to take responsibility, without using an aggressive edge.

Act Three: Sharon and Rob Abandon Their Roles

While neither one would say they liked the situation, both needed to identify what they got out of it.

Rob eventually admitted that he got into being “poor me;” there was something really gratifying about it. Still, it was his responsibility to make his job situation better. He tried to imagine what it was like for her to be on the other end of this, remembering that despite her delivery, she really did care about him. He learned to tell her when he felt she was pushing him too much.

Sharon acknowledged that she liked being the one in charge; it made her feel stronger and more secure. She learned to say to Rob, “Here is what I would do if I wanted what you want,” and then let him decide what he wanted to do. She got out of her own Victim role by focusing on what she wanted to do and pursuing that, rather than blame him for her unhappiness.

She had to learn to set limits, and to realize that even if she believed she was doing the right thing, she often came across in a controlling and critical way that wasn’t helping. Being the Persecutor actually gave Rob an excuse not to improve his life.

Next up will be a post on how perfectionism affects relationships. Click the subscribe button, type in your email address, and you’ll receive a link each time a new post comes out.